Panicky GOP leaders: If we nominate Trump, we'll get wiped out in the Senate

Probably, yeah. That’s how I’d bet. But I’d also have bet before he got into the race that Trump would have long ago crashed out of the primary by now.

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His favorable rating among the general electorate is poisonous. It was poisonous among Republicans circa May of this year too.

Many leading Republican officials, strategists and donors now say they fear that Mr. Trump’s nomination would lead to an electoral wipeout, a sweeping defeat that could undo some of the gains Republicans have made in recent congressional, state and local elections. But in a party that lacks a true leader or anything in the way of consensus — and with the combative Mr. Trump certain to scorch anyone who takes him on — a fierce dispute has arisen about what can be done to stop his candidacy and whether anyone should even try…

“It would be an utter, complete and total disaster,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, himself a presidential candidate who has tangled with Mr. Trump, said of his rival’s effect on lower-tier Republican candidates. “If you’re a xenophobic, race-baiting, religious bigot, you’re going to have a hard time being president of the United States, and you’re going to do irreparable damage to the party.”…

“There is not a bit of confusion among our members that if Donald Trump is the nominee, we’re going to get wiped out,” a prominent Republican senator said about Mr. Trump’s effect on Senate races in states such as New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Everyone wants someone else to start hitting Trump to avert doomsday but no one wants to do it themselves, either for fear of being counterattacked publicly or because having the big bad GOP establishment start picking on him might actually help Trump’s popularity. To nominate him, though, is essentially to bet that he would mobilize more white voters to vote Republican next year than he would mobilize minorities, most notably Latinos, to turn out to vote for Hillary. A recent AP poll put Trump’s favorable rating among Latinos at 11/72; he likes to tell crowds that he’s going to win the Latino vote, but, er, no. On the other hand, there are potentially a lot of white middle-class voters out there, some of them “Reagan Democrats,” who’ve stayed away from the party in recent years and might perk up at a populist agenda. The GOP may have already suffered as much damage from Latino voters as can realistically be inflicted, with purple states that contain large Latino minorities having already turned blue the last two cycles. The nature of partisan politics is such that Trump probably starts with 46 percent or so of the vote on day one, and if Hillary’s as underwhelming in the general election as everyone expects, some of the undecided eight percent of the electorate may give the celebrity in the race a look. My God, I think I’m talking myself into this.

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Not really, though. Because one problem Trump would face that another nominee might not is this: What happens when some small but significant minority of Republicans decides that they just can’t vote for the guy? That is to say, while Trump may bring some disaffected middle-class whites back into the Republican fold, which voters already in the fold will decide to leave rather than vote for him?

“Couldn’t vote for Trump, couldn’t vote for Hillary,” Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol told The Daily Caller in an email…

“We’ve just experienced a seven-year tutorial on the disastrous impact of a chief executive who’s unable to work effectively with Congress and unwilling to seek consensus,” [Michael] Medved said. “Unfortunately, Trump’s imperial ego makes Obama’s surly intransigence look as accommodating as Mr. Rogers’ neighborliness.”…

Radio host Glenn Beck may have been the first notable conservative to declare his inability to support Trump as the nominee back in August.

How many Republican voters decide to boycott a Trump nomination will depend partly on how unified party brokers are behind him. Would Marco Rubio campaign eagerly for Trump in Florida? Would John Kasich do so in Ohio? How about Cory Gardner in Colorado? But maybe it’s unfair to single Trump out on that point, as some of his supporters pretty clearly have decided that not every Republican contender this year would be acceptable to them as nominee either. Cruz might be, but what about Rubio? What percentage of Trump fans would rather stay home, even at the risk of making Hillary Clinton president, then pull the lever for a guy whose claim to fame in the Senate is championing a bad amnesty bill? The legacy of Trumpmania may be this: No matter who ends up being nominated, divisions inside the party are now sufficiently bitter that some meaningful part of the base is staying home. Whether it’s Trump or someone else, you’re fighting the Democrats next year short-handed.

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Here’s Kasich’s new ad, which is aimed not at Trump fans but at undecideds who might be considering Trump. It’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about here. If the ad works for you, you’ll think, “I could never vote for that guy.” If the ad doesn’t work for you, you’re probably thinking, “I could never vote for some RINO who’d take this sort of PC shot at Trump.” Good luck reconciling those two sides. Semi-related exit question via Ed Kilgore: Er, which early states is establishment favorite Marco Rubio supposed to win? He looks destined to finish behind Cruz in Iowa and he’s behind Trump in New Hampshire, which has been kind to Trumpian populist outsiders like Pat Buchanan in the past. Winning South Carolina after losing Iowa and New Hampshire will be tough, especially if Cruz has momentum from winning one of those states. Does Rubio win Nevada, maybe? Some of the “SEC primaries”? If he doesn’t surprise Trump by taking NH, he’s going to have a lot of naysayers haunting him for the first six weeks.

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